any echo of dream
by ascoolsuchasi
Summary: infection spreads slow. ten days. then you become.


**Warnings** for major character death/s, mentions of blood, gore, suicide, murder, guns, knives, allusions to prostitution. Basically anything and everything that goes in hand in hand with zombie apocalypses.

**Author's Note: **Title from the e. e. cummings poem LIX from [ViVa], as is the poem that Charles reads. Read it in full here (). As for the lullabies, I mashed together the German lullaby_ Schlaf, Kinderlein, Schlaf_ and the Italian one, _Ninna Nabba di Pace. _Together, it reads: "Sleep, child sleep. Run with me for a big hide and seek. Happy because you know I'll find you. There falls down a dream. Sleep, child sleep. And we'll be like brothers, you and me."

* * *

><p>any echo of dream<p>

_Day 01_

"No. No no no no nononononono. Erik! Erik," charles runs his hands over erik's face, "shhh, it's okay. Erik it's alright," he's shaking and he doesn't know if it's because he's going into shock or because of - "it's okay. We'll - I'll find - don't worry. Shhh, Erik, love it's okay. We'll find a cure. It's okay. Shhhh, Erik. It's okay. It's alright, we've got time. We'll find a cure. Ten days, remember love? It's okay. Shhhh, it's alright Erik."

they fall asleep like that. charles muttering incoherency to erik in his arms and erik shaking and convulsing and bleeding out.

_Day 02_

it's just before daybreak and they don't have the supplies they need.

charles thinks about waking up erik with a touch to the arm but remembers the last time he did. he says, _erik, wake_ instead, says, _don't worry love going out for supplies_ and sends the feeling of a kiss.

he picks up the twelve gauge and counts the bullets. ten. he thinks _ironic_ then, _it'll have to do._

later he comes back with three bags filled with cans and clothes and a suitcase and a new knife. he had to shoot three times.

_Day 03_

charles is rocking them back and forth, his hand threading through erik's hair. _they_ are out tonight and the sound of their wheezing and the drag of their legs used to set him on edge. now, they just infuriate him.

he forces them out of his head, singing half forgotten, half skimmed lullabies.

_schlaf, Kindlein schlaf...corri con me per un grande nascondino...felice perché sai che io ti troverò...da fällt herab ein Träumelein...schlaf, Kindlein schlaf...E saremo due fratelli tu ed io..._

that night, erik can't sleep and the shelter's structure rattles and shakes too much.

that night, charles says _sleep_ and erik does.

_Day 04_

charles sets down the twelve gauge with a ridiculous amount of calm. he swallows down air like he wasn't ever going to get enough. he closed his eyes tight to stop the tears from trailing down his cheeks. he thinks, _not today _and lets out a shuddery sob and tries to spit the taste of ash and metal out of his mouth. it doesn't leave.

_Day 05_

there's little light filtering through the shelter. charles holds their old and worn and only book. there were others, in the beginning but, as it goes, nothing lasts forever, especially when literature - a remembrance of the normal and mundane and _what used to be_ - can suffice as currency in trade rather than what charles may have been too weak at one point to do, and erik too strong.

but in any case, he holds the yellowed paged, frail, curled in book in his hands and looks to erik and asks, _do you want me to read to you?_ and doesn't wait for an answer.

_my darling since...you and...i are throughly haunted by…what neither is any...echo of dream nor...any flowering of any...echo(but the echo...of the flower of...Dreaming)somewhere behind us...always trying(or sometimes trying under...us)to is it...find somehow(but O gracefully)a...we, entirely whose least...breathing may surprise...ourselves…-let's then...despise what is not courage my...darling(for only Nobody knows...where truth grows why...and birds fly and...especially who the moon is..._

_Day 06_

charles fends them off from the shelter in the sweltering of the sun. he bites back a cry when he falls. he bites back a cry when he shoots her.

really, it could have been any of them.

_Day 07_

if erik could yell, charles is sure that he would be right now. and there are reasons why he should, but that doesn't mean charles is justified in his own right.

_i just want us to be together._

charles knows it's a stupid thing, even as he thinks it. they still wouldn't be together if he became.

_Day 08_

_i was looking around_, charles says to erik, his hand placed over erik's slow beating heart, _i found some of hank's old papers he was going on about a serum - a sort of...cure._

he waits until he feels the hitch in erik's breathing. _i think that maybe - if i could - it would mean a cure. you wouldn't become._

he sets his hand on erik's jaw and brushes his thumb across his cheek and says, _i can fix this_.

he sends erik sex and pleasure and _lovelovelove_; everything that they used to do before the turn.

_Day 09_

charles holds the damp cloth above erik's eyes. he wrings it out and lets the cool, wet, near sticky liquid trickle down onto erik's face and down his neck. _hold on love_, he says and rubs it in slowly with his fingertips, wincing at the icy feel of erik's skin.

he prays to gods he's never once believed in that this will work.

by nightfall, erik's body is warmer. he smiles.

_Day 10_

charles' eyes are closed. his breath ragged and his body quivers and aches where erik - should have known.

infection spreads slowly. he knows this. has _seen_ it too many times. the final stage is heat.

he holds up the twelve gauge, thinks, _i love you erik lehnsherr_ and shoots.

he drops the twelve gauge and drops to the floor. he has seven bullets left.

_Day 11_

there's a gun shot. crows fly.

the world goes black.

and the world goes quiet.


End file.
